Through the Window of Time
Weldon Hamilton,  Veterans' Writing Group
Published by Border Book Festival, 1998
Las Cruces, New Mexico



    I was in the United States Air Corps at the fall of Bataan in the Philippine Islands.   I was captured by the Japanese Army and was taken like a galley slave to Japan, a harsh, cruel, and unforgiving society.   In Japan I saw a stern military dominated society.   The military with their weapons, swords dangling at their sides, stern and erect.   A group of people doing without, but with a total commitment to discipline.   I lived as a slave, with no rights, and displeasure either by work or expression of my condition or treatment.   I stared at their flag with utter hatred and contempt.   In a three-month period I had been in the presence of the death, either direct or by crass neglect, of 43,000 soldiers;  15,000 on the death march;  25,000 at Camp O'Donnell;  3,000 at Camp Cabanatuan.

    Now, I look out a new window of Japan as if they are a different people in a different place.   I watched the pictures of the olympics on TV.   Now I see these same people in a different setting, different clothes.  I see what appears to be the same man who beat me without mercy for accidentally breaking a limb of a plant, knocking me down and stomping on me;  now he stands erect receiving a gold medal for a fast run.   I see the beautiful children by the hundreds proudly waiving the white flag with the detestable red circle in the center.   The same red circle that was on the planes that strafed us as we lay helpless on the ground.   Now I see all the people who threw rocks at us as we were dragged into Japan like the slaves of Rome.

    Now, all the children with sweet, innocent faces smile and wave their pretty little flags, while the bones of 43,000 men that were with me lay rotting in the ground.   Why did they attack us and destroy our fleet on that peaceful Sunday  -  for what reason?   Now they stand with their pretty little flags with the red ball in the center.

    Recently, as I stood in the El Paso Air Terminal, forty Japanese soldiers lined up in military order and counted off.   I told my wife, "I know all those guys," and she said, "No, you don't."   But I knew them.   Fifty-five years had not dimmed the memory of their cruelty, beatings, and terror.   It was now only a different time; nothing had changed.   I can always forgive them, but as life is in my body, I shall never forget.   Yes, they stand with that peaceful, happy look, as if the past had never happened.   No, they don't really know their past -- no one told them -- but I do.


    Written in 1998 when the Winter Olympics were in Japan.
    Posted 12 June 2003